


The Walls of the World

by Silex



Category: Original Work
Genre: Exploration, Gen, I honestly had no clue how to tag this, POV Nonhuman, Penguins, Trick or Treat: Treat, the RPF is for Real Penguin Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 17:02:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16201829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex
Summary: Even as a young penguin he had wondered, what lay beyond the horizon? Where did the bits of land that broke away and floated off go to? One day he decided to find out.A story based on the emperor penguin found on Peka Peka Beach, New Zealand back in 2011.





	The Walls of the World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Serenade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serenade/gifts).



There had been many times he had stared out across the ocean, full of its floating islands and wondered. The ground they lived on was stable, but the parts of it that broke away floated and vanished into the distance.

Where did they go, he wondered, how far?

And what was beyond the point where they vanished.

It didn’t look that far, closer than the mountains rising in the opposite direction, forming the near wall of the world. He and the others had all traveled along the near wall, for that was the place they went to nest. To him at least, the existence of a near wall implied that there was a far wall as well, just as the clouds in the sky mirrored the floating islands in the water.

He became obsessed with the notion.

The others laughed at him, thought it was a foolish, dangerous interest. Monsters of all sorts lived in the waters offshore. Just going to eat was a risk to life and limb, but it was a necessary risk.

His wanting to see what lay beyond the floating islands and known waters was pointless.

That was what they all said.

But the largest of monsters came from somewhere.

There were monsters like small, black islands and they were harmless.

Or at least dangerous only by proximity, any harm inflicted was purely by accident due to how horrifyingly large they were.

When he swam to eat he swam farther than the others, stopping to rest on the floating islands, watching the largest of monsters.

Listening as they sang their strange stories.

He didn’t know the words, but he was sure that they spoke of strange places that only they had seen.

The sunless depths, and the places where the floating islands vanished.

He decided to follow them.

There was no planning, he swam out to eat one day and decided to keep going.

When he grew tired he rested on a floating island.

When he was hungry or thirsty he returned to the water.

He watched for dangerous monsters, listened to the harmless ones and felt the world itself change.

The sun was hotter, the wind different.

Things other than islands occasionally floated in the water.

There were more of the ones that flew.

More in both abundance and kinds.

From time to time he and they found themselves resting on the same island and would talk at each other, maybe understanding one word in ten.

They told him that he was right, that there was a place beyond the horizon, a place where the floating islands disappeared.

And they did vanish, just not in the way that he’d expected.

Each day there were fewer floating islands and the ones that remained were smaller and smaller.

Undaunted, he traveled onwards, following the currents that the vanishing islands drifted on.

For he had reason to hope.

The islands were diminishing, but it had been a long time since he had seen any dangerous monsters and there were more other things in the water. Colorful things, soft things, things that looked almost like food, but weren’t.

He was seeing things that he had never imagined, each day bringing new wonders.

Then the unthinkable happened, the last of the floating islands vanished, leaving him trapped in the water.

For many sleepless days and nights he traveled, sleeping afloat in the water, waking up when curious fish nibbled at his flippers or for no reason at all other than the sense of something vast passing beneath him.

Occasionally he caught a glimpse of things in the distance, large enough to be a floating island, but the wrong shape, and as often as not, moving against the currents.

The first few times he tried to swim to them, hoping that he would be able to climb onto one and rest, but they were too far, too fast.

They were strange monsters, he decided. Harmless ones that mimicked floating islands and roared and thundered along without any interest in him.

It seemed that there was no far wall to the world, just endless sea.

A flying one landed in the water next to him one day, screeching and yelling at him with words he couldn’t understand before returning to the sky.

The encounter gave him hope, for he knew that the flying ones could not fly for as long as he could swim. They had to rest somewhere and they rarely rested floating on the water.

He watched the direction they went and adjusted his course accordingly.

There he was sure he would find something, and indeed he did.

The sun rose, high and hot, the sky a dazzling, cloudless blue. There was no wind, only the smallest of waves, and in the distance a cloud of fog that refused to burn away in the heat and light.

The next day the cloud was still there, a blur that spread.

He used it to navigate as the flying ones came from that direction.

It wasn’t until the third day of watching it, when he realized that it wasn’t gray or brown, or white, like a cloud or fog, but a color he had no name for, that he realized what it was.

Land.

Or at the very least a floating island.

Heartened he swam harder than he had since the beginning of his journey, pressing on day and night until his belly scraped against the something he could not describe.

It was ground, he supposed, but soft and shifting like snow. Except that it didn’t vanish in the water.

He stood up, tested it with his beak and found that it was rough like ice or rocks, but far too small.

After traveling for so long with only water to drink, he missed the taste of fresh snow, so he cautiously tried a bit of the strange ground.

It crumbled on his tongue like old ice, but was hot as the air.

Hot and tasting of salt.

Resting on his belly he tried to make sense of his surroundings, but doing so proved impossible.

Things farther inland moved like waves without actually moving. Things in colors he had never seen were all around. Closer to him there was a twisting white thing half buried in the sand. As long as a fair sized monster, he could not imagine what it was, branching like kelp, but solid and nearly as hard as ice.

There were smaller, darker branching things to be found and he investigated them as well. They were brittle, like dried kelp, but harder and the wrong shape.

In the distance he saw the dark, bluish blur of a mountain and his heart soared.

He had found the far wall of the world!

That alone made his journey worth it all.

Laying down he thought over what to do next.

Investigating the indescribably colors that moved like water was certainly worth doing, but the ground was soft and difficult to walk on and after so long at sea he wanted to wait for his balance to return.

Besides, it was hot and he was tired and even seeing things in the distance was amazing.

In the hot sun he dozed off, thinking about how far he had come.

The baying of a monster woke him.

Monsters never hunted on land, so he was safe, or so he thought.

The baying was drawing nearer far too quickly, the monster itself soon appearing.

Quickly was what stuck with him. On land monsters dragged themselves on their bellies, rippling along like waves, but this one was moving impossibly fast and it certainly wasn’t on its belly.

The monster was swimming through the air!

He had to be dreaming then, for next to the monster was something as tall and slender as the branching things on the beach.

A flying monster and a walking kelp.

Proof of how tired he was.

The tall thing made noises.

Faintly familiar noises, matching those of the tall ungainly things that occasionally appeared back home.

Except those were bulky and slid and waddled uncertainly across ice and stones, like hatchlings.

The tall thing froze, the floating monster staying by its side.

More strange noises from the thing and the monster looked to it, then to him, then back to it, letting out a cry almost like that of a flying one.

The monster turned in a circle and he realized that it wasn’t floating, but moving on four impossibly long and thin limbs.

How did they hold it up?

And what was the purpose of the stunted fifth limb lashing through the air behind it like the tail of a fish?

Was that how it moved through the air on legs too small to hold its weight?

The tall thing crouched down, to look more closely at him, just like the tall ungainly things back home and realization hit him.

The ungainly things were so awkward back home because they were hatchlings, still in their baby down.

This tall thing was sleek and slender because it was an adult.

He had found where they came from! Just like his kind traveled to have their eggs, so too did the tall things.

They made their home at the opposite end of the world!

They were harmless and curious, or at least their chicks were, so he saw no reason to be afraid.

He watched them as they watched him, and eventually they wandered off, the strange monster following them.

Closing his eyes he went back to sleep, still half convinced that he had dreamed it all.

After all, even if the tall things lived here it was impossible to imagine one traveling with a monster, let alone a floating monster that floated on legs as thin as kelp fronds.

When he had rested he would continue to explore the place he had found, perhaps walk all the way to the far wall and touch it.

To think, that he would soon be the first to touch both walls of the world!

**Author's Note:**

> Reading through the list of requests for this exchange this one caught my attention. It was fascinating enough that I looked up the incident that it was based on and figured that would be the end of it. Then I realized that this was yet another excuse for me to write something from the point of view of a nonhuman character. I couldn't resist, tried to imagine the world through a penngin's eyes and came up with this fic. I hope you liked it.


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